Books on Happiness / The Definitive Book Of Body Language- 2 students

Evaluation and Deceit Signals

cake and ice cream you eat that makes you look fat.'

if you told everyone the complete truth all the time, you'd notonly end up lonely, you might even finish up in hospital or prison. Lying is the oil that greases our interactions with others and lets us maintain friendly social relationships. These are called White Lies because their goal is to make others feel comfortable instead of telling them the cold, hard truth. Research shows that social liars are more popular than those who continually tell the truth, even though we know the social liar is lying to us. Malicious Lies, however, are where one person deliberately sets out to deceive another for personal benefit.

Lying Research

The least dependable signs of lying are the ones over which a person has the most control, such as words, because a person can rehearse their lies. The most reliable clues to lying are the gestures a person makes automatically, because they have little or no control over them. These responses are most likely to happen during lies because they are emotionally the most important things to the liar.

Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst studied 121 couples as they had a conversation with a third person. One third of the participants were told to appear likeable, while another third were instructed to seem competent, and the rest were asked just to be themselves. All Participants were then asked to watch the video of themselves and identify any lies they had told during the conversation no matter how big or small. Some lies were white lies, such as saying they liked someone when they really didn't, while other lies were more extreme, such as falsely claiming to be the star of a rock band. Overall, Feldman found that 62% of his participantstold an average of two to three lies every ten minutes. James Patterson, author of The Day America told The Truth, interviewed over 2000 Americans and found that 91% lied regularly both at home and at work.

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'It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.' J.K.JEROME

So how can you tell when someone is lying, stalling or simply thinking it over? Recognition of deceit, procrastination, boredom and evaluation gestures can be some of the most important observation skills you can learn. In this chapter, you'll learn the body language signals that give people away. The first part of the chapter will deal with lying and deceit.

The Three Wise Monkeys

These monkeys symbolise those who hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. Their simple hand-to-face gestures form the basis of the human deceit gestures. In simple terms, when we see, speak and hear lies or deceit, we are likely to attempt to cover our mouth, eyes or ears with our hands.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

People who hear bad news or witness a horrific accident will often cover their entire face with their hands to symbolically stop themselves from seeing or hearing the awful news. This was the gesture that was most observed worldwide when

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people heard about the planes flying into the Twin Towers on 11 September2001.

As we've already discussed, children often use hand-to-face gestures openly when they lie. If a child tells a lie, he will often cover his mouth with one or both hands in an attempt to stop the deceitful words from coming out. If he doesn't want to listen to a reprimanding parent, he simply covers his ears with his hands to block out the noise. When he sees something he doesn't want to look at, he covers his eyes with his hands or arms. As he becomes older, these hand-to-face gestures become quicker and less obvious, but they still occur when he is lying, covering up or witnessing deceit.

These gestures are also associated with doubt, uncertainty or exaggeration. Desmond Morris conducted research in which nurses were instructed to lie to their patients about their health in a role-play situation. The nurses who lied showed a greater frequency of hand-to-face gestures than those who told the truth to the patients. Men and women also both increase their number of gulps of saliva when lying, but this is usually noticeable only with men, as they have an enlarged Adam's apple.

7 did not have sexual relations with that woman,' said the politician as he gulped and rubbed his nose.

As mentioned at the beginning of this book, we'll be analysing gestures in isolation and discussing them individually but this is not how they usually occur. They are part of a larger gesture cluster and should be studied in the same way as words in a sentence, that is, how each word is relevant to other words and the overall context in which they are used. When someone uses a hand-to-face gesture, it doesn't always mean that he or she is lying. It does indicate, however, that the person could be holding back information and further observation of other gesture clusters can confirm or deny your suspicions. It's important that you avoid interpreting a single hand-to-face gesture in isolation.

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While there is no single guaranteed movement, facial expression or twitch that confirms someone is telling a lie, there are several clusters you can learn to recognise which will dramatically increase your chances of spotting a lie.

How the Face Reveals the Truth

The face is used more than any other part of the body to cover up lies. We use smiles, nods and winks in an attempt to cover up, but unfortunately for us, our body signals will tell the truth and there is a lack of congruence between our body gestures and facial signals. Our attitudes and emotions are continually revealed on our faces and we are completely unaware of it most of the time.

Fleeting incongruencies in the face reveal conflicts in the emotions.

When we're going to try to conceal a lie, or a certain thought flashes into our mind, it can be shown for a split second on our face. We usually interpret someone's quick nose touch as an itch, or that when they rest their hand on their face they are deeply interested in us, without ever suspecting that we're boring them to death. For example, we filmed a man discussing how well he got on with his mother-in-law. Each time he mentioned her name the left side of his face raised in a momentary sneer that lasted only a split second but told us volumes about how he really felt.

Women Lie the Best and That's the Truth

In Why Men Lie & Women Cry (Pease) we showed how women are better at reading emotions, and therefore better at manipulating others with an appropriate lie. This trait is seen

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in baby girls who cry in sympathy with other babies and can then cause other babies to cry by simply bursting into tears at will. Sanjida O'Connell PhD, author of Mindreading, conducted a five-month study into how we lie and also concluded that women are far better liars than men. She found that women tell more complicated lies than men, whereas men tell simple lies such as 'I missed the bus' or 'My mobile phone battery was flat — that's why I couldn't call you.' She also found that attractive people are more believed than unattractive ones, explaining why leaders such as John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton were able to get away with as much as they did.

Why It's Hard to Lie

As we said in Chapter 3, most people believe that when someone is lying they smile more than usual, but research shows the opposite is true — they smile less. The difficulty with lying is that the subconscious mind acts automatically and independently of our verbal lie, so our body language gives us away. This is why people who rarely tell lies are easily caught, regardless of how convincing they may sound. The moment they begin to lie, their body sends out contradictory signals, and these give us a feeling that they're not telling the truth. During the lie, the subconscious mind sends out nervous energy which appears as a gesture that can contradict what was said. Professional liars, such as politicians, lawyers, actors and television announcers, have refined their body gestures to the point where it is difficult to 'see' the lie, and people fall for it, hook, line and sinker.

They do it in one of two ways. First, they practise what 'feel' like the right gestures when they tell the lie, but this only works when they have practised telling a lot of lies over long periods of time. Second, they can reduce their gesturing so that they don't use any positive or negative gestures while lying, but that's also hard to do.

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With practice, liars can become convincing,just like actors.

Try this simple test - tell a deliberate lie to someone face-to- face and make a conscious effort to suppress all body gestures Even when your major body gestures are consciously suppressed, numerous small micro-gestures will still be transmitted. These include facial muscular twitching, dilation and contraction of pupils, sweating, flushed cheeks, eye-blink- ing rate increasing from 10 blinks per minute to as many as 50 blinks per minute and many other micro-signals that indicate deceit. Research using slow-motion cameras shows that these micro-gestures can occur within a split second and it's only people such as professional interviewers, salespeople and the very perceptive who can read them.

It's obvious then, that to be able to lie successfully, you need to have your body hidden or out of sight. Interrogation involves placing the person on a chair in the open or placing him under lights with his body in full view of the interrogators; his lies are much easier to see under those circumstances. Lying is easier if you're sitting behind a desk where your body is partially hidden, peering over a fence or from behind a closed door. The best way to lie is over the telephone or in an email.

Eight of the Most Common

Lying Gestures

1.The Mouth Cover

The hand covers the mouth as the brain subconsciously instructs it to try to suppress the deceitful words that are being said. Sometimes this

The Mouth Cover

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gesture might only be several fingers over the mouth or even a closed fist, but its meaning remains the same.

Some people try to disguise the Mouth Cover gesture by giving a fake cough. When actors play gangsters or criminals, they often use this gesture when discussing criminal activities with other gangsters or when being interrogated by the police, so that the audience knows they're being secretive or dishonest.

If the person who is speaking uses this gesture, it indicates that they could be lying. If they cover their mouth while you are speaking, it can show they might feel you are hiding something. One of the most unsettling sights a conference speaker can see is his audience using this gesture while he's speaking. A speaker should stop and ask, 'Would someone like to ask a question?' or 'I can see some people disagree. Let's take questions.' This allows the audience's objections to be brought into the open, giving the speaker the opportunity to qualify statements and answer questions, just as he would do if they had their arms crossed.

The Mouth Cover may appear as innocuous as the 'Shhh' gesture where one finger is placed vertically over the lips; this gesture would likely have been used by the person's mother or father when he was a child. As an adult, the person uses it in an attempt to tell themselves not to say something they're feeling. The point is that it alerts you to something that is being withheld.

If your parents or minders used this gesture when you were a child, there's a good chance it's now in your adult repertoire

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2.The Nose Touch

Sometimes the Nose Touch can be several quick rubs below the nose or it may be one quick, almost imperceptible nose touch. Women perform this gesture with smaller strokes than men, perhaps to avoid smudging their make-up.

The important thing to remember is that this type of action should be read in clusters and in context; the person could have hay fever or a cold.

Scientists at the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago found that when you lie, chemicals known as catecholamines are released, causing tissue inside the nose to swell. They used special imaging cameras that show blood flow in the body to reveal that intentional lying also causes an increase in blood pressure. This technology indicates that the human nose actually expands with blood during lying, and is known as the 'Pinocchio Effect'. Increased blood pressure inflates the nose and causes the nerve endings in the nose to tingle, resulting in a brisk rubbing action to the nose with the hand to satisfy the 'itch'.

You can't see the swelling with the naked eye but this is what appears to cause the Nose Touch gesture. The same phenomenon occurs when a person is upset, anxious or angry.

American neurologist Alan Hirsch and psychiatrist Charles Wolf did an extensive analysis of Bill Clinton's testimony to the Grand Jury on his affair with Monica Lewinsky and found that, when he told the truth, he rarely touched his

'I did not have sexual relations with that woman!'

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nose. When he lied, however, he gave a split-second frown before he answered and touched his nose once every four minutes for a grand total of 26 nose touches. Conversely, Bill Clinton did not touch his nose at all when he answered truthfully, they said.

Studies with Body Imaging cameras have revealed that a man's penis also swells with blood when he tells a lie. Maybe the Grand Jury should have pulled Bill's trousers down instead.

Grand Jury prosecutor: 'Mr Clinton - why did the chicken crosstheroad?'

Bill Clinton: 'What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken please? And I did not cross the road with that chicken.'

3.What About an itchy Nose?

The itch of a person's nose is normally satisfied by a deliberate rubbing or scratching action, as opposed to the light strokes of the Nose Touch gesture. As with the Mouth Cover, the Nose Touch can be used both by the speaker to disguise his own deceit and by the listener who doubts the speaker's words. An itch is usually an isolated repetitive gesture and is incongruent or out of context with the person's overall conversation.

4.The Eye Rub

'See no evil,' said one of the wise monkeys. When a child doesn't want to look at something he'll cover his eyes with one or both hands. When an adult doesn't want to look at something distasteful, the Eye Rub is likely to occur. The Eye Rub is the brain's attempt to block out the deceit, doubt or distasteful

thing it sees, or to avoid having to look at the face of the person who is being lied to. Men usually rub their eyes vigor-

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